Video conferencing is an easy and convenient way for people to communicate despite being in different locations. For example, co-workers utilize video conferencing to coordinate projects across worksites, family members and friends utilize video conferencing to keep in touch across long distances, and so forth. Video conferences add an extra dimension of communication to what would otherwise be a standard telephone call in that the participants can observe facial cues and body language.
Additionally, video conferences frequently include a content presentation with a participant video stream. For example, a video conference enabled conference room may include two video screens; one for a video feed of the remote participant, and the other for a visual presentation. To illustrate, in a business meeting video conference between two remote parties, the first video screen can display a video feed showing the face of one participant, while the other video screen can display a spreadsheet of data or a slide presentation.
As video conferencing has become increasingly popular, a significant problem has arisen in that display area is limited. One instance where limited display area is problematic is when a video conference includes more than two remote participants. To illustrate, a video conference may include a participant sitting at a desk in a first location, a group of five participants sitting in a conference room at a second location, and another person working from home at a third location. In this configuration, and using a conventional video conference system, the participant at the first location may see a first window including a view of the five participants at the second location, and second equally-sized window including a view of the participant at the third location. It follows that the five participants in the first window would appear smaller and more distant than the participant in the second window. This can lead to frustration when one of the five participants in the first window is speaking, but is harder to see due to the reduced size and clarity of the display within the first window.
Another instance where limited display area is particularly problematic is when a visual presentation is included as part of a video conference. For example, in video conferencing, display area is at a premium but is generally not utilized appropriately. To illustrate, a visual presentation within a video conference may include presentation slides with large text. Many conventional video conference systems dedicate an entire monitor to the visual presentation, while including any live video feeds (e.g., video feeds of conference participants) on a separate monitor. This means that the separate monitor may be crowded with several video feeds that include several video conference participants, while an entire monitor is dedicated to a single presentation slide. This is typically not the most efficient use of display area and often causes communication confusion within the video conference that results in user frustration as important elements of the video conference are not displayed with appropriate prominence.
Another problem with conventional video conference systems is effectively managing data bandwidth. For example, some conventional video conference systems can compress a video conferencing channel to be broadcast at a lower data rate. Conventional video conference systems, however, typically compress the entire video conferencing channel such that everything displayed in the channel is transmitted with less clarity. This is problematic when a video conferencing channel includes a person who is speaking or is otherwise important but is hard to see clearly after the entire channel has been encoded or compressed.
Thus, there are several disadvantages with conventional video conferencing systems.